Folks maintain U.S., Israeli flags and a poster of U.S. President Donald Trump throughout a rally towards Iran’s ruling institution in Los Angeles, California, U.S. February 28, 2026.
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REUTERS/Jill Connelly
With Saturday’s military operation towards Iran, President Donald Trump demonstrated a dramatic evolution in threat tolerance, adjusting in only a matter of months how far he was keen to go in utilizing American military would possibly to confront Tehran’s clerical rule.
Guardrails have been tossed apart, as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered up a battle plan that included focused strikes on Iran’s management, together with the 86-year-old Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whose dying Trump triumphantly introduced in a social media submit hours after launching the military operation.
For Trump, it was a far cry from the place he stood simply eight months in the past. At Israel’s urging throughout its 12-day struggle with Iran final June, he agreed to deployB-2 bombers to pummel three key Iranian nuclear websites — however drew a shiny pink line when Israelis introduced his administration with a plan for killing Khamenei.
The president peppered the supreme chief with thinly veiled threats again in June that he may have killed him if he needed to. However he rejected the Israeli plan out of concern that it will destabilize the area.
That caution was put aside on Saturday with Trump asserting Khamenei had been killed, whereas the Israeli military introduced it had taken out Iran’s protection minister and the commander of its Revolutionary Guard. Iran had not confirmed the Supreme Chief’s dying as of Saturday night.
Khamenei “was unable to keep away from our Intelligence and Extremely Subtle Monitoring Methods and, working carefully with Israel, there was not a factor he, or the opposite leaders which were killed together with him, may do,” Trump stated. “That is the only best likelihood for the Iranian folks to take again their Nation.”
Trump loses persistence
Trump had pursued talks with Iran for months. Administration officers instructed reporters that they supplied Iran some ways to have a peaceable nuclear program that could possibly be used for civilian functions, together with a suggestion of free nuclear gas in perpetuity.
However the officers, who weren’t approved to remark publicly and spoke on situation of anonymity, stated it was clear to them that Iran needed enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. Considered one of them stated that Iran has met their affords with “video games, methods, stall ways.” The order to launch strikes got here simply two days after Trump dispatched his particular envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, for one more spherical of talks with Iranian officers. Center East and European allies have been urging the US administration to give negotiations extra time as Trump signalled he was operating out of persistence.
“The results are probably to be as far-reaching as they’re unsure: Inside the system that has held energy for almost 5 many years, between the federal government and a dissatisfied populace, and between Iran and its adversaries,” stated Ali Vaez, Iran venture director on the Worldwide Disaster Group. “And though the regime is weakened, a way that this showdown is an all-or-nothing wrestle for its very survival could lead on it to reply with each instrument nonetheless at its disposal.”
Revised threat calculation
Saturday’s strikes got here after a collection of previous provocative actions towards Iran that resulted in restricted blowback, which appeared to inform Trump’s threat calculation, stated Aaron David Miller, who served as an adviser on Center East points to Democratic and Republican administrations over twenty years.
Trump in 2018 pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration. In 2020, Trump ordered a drone strike killing high Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
On the time, the killing of Soleimani, the pinnacle of Iran’s elite Quds Drive, was arguably essentially the most provocative U.S. military action in the Center East since President George W. Bush launched the 2003 Iraq Battle to topple Saddam Hussein.
After which Trump this previous June ordered the strikes on Iran’s nuclear amenities, which he claimed had “obliterated” their program.
“He did all of these items with out price or consequence to him,” stated Miller, who’s now a senior fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace.
Trump administration officers had publicly urged Tehran to quit its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile packages and finish its backing of regional armed proxies. However administration officers stated that Tehran wouldn’t interact on the missile and proxy considerations.
Iran’s rigidity, at a second when its economic system is in shambles weighed by many years of sanctions and its military battered by final yr’s struggle, astounded Trump.
Even earlier than the newest spherical of talks ended on Thursday, there have been indicators Trump was leaning towards military action.
On Tuesday, Trump in his State of the Union speech claimed that Iran has been constructing ballistic missiles that might attain the US homeland — a justification that he repeated once more on Saturday as he introduced the bombardment of Iran was underway.
Iran hasn’t acknowledged it’s constructing or looking for to construct intercontinental ballistic missiles. The US Defence Intelligence Company, nonetheless, stated in an unclassified report final yr that Iran may develop a militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “ought to Tehran determine to pursue the potential.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed reporters on Wednesday that Iran’s refusal to converse to its ballistic missile program was a “large drawback.” Rubio declined to tackle the DIA discovering that Iran was nonetheless years away from growing a missile that might attain the US.
And Vice President JD Vance, a former US Marine who served in Iraq and has been sceptical of US interventions, on Thursday instructed The Washington Publish that Trump hadn’t determined whether or not to strike Iran. However he supplied assurances that military action wouldn’t outcome in the US changing into concerned in a drawn-out battle.
“The concept we’re going to be in a Center Japanese struggle for years with no finish in sight — there is no such thing as a likelihood that may occur,” Vance stated.
By Friday, Trump was venting anew about Iran’s method.
“ I am not pleased with the truth that they are not keen to give us what now we have to have,” Trump stated. “I am not thrilled with that. We’ll see what occurs.” Senior US lawmakers have been instructed early Saturday that the strikes have been coming. Trump monitored the operation from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Seashore, Florida, with members of his nationwide safety crew.
Printed on March 1, 2026
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